I like running all kinds of game - from fantasy wilderness exploration to hard SF - but I've come to realise, on balance, that I am an urban GM. My favourite type of game takes place in a city. Moreover, it takes place within one city. Almost all of the things that I want in a game - a web of interpersonal relationships, a feeling of connection between characters and locations, growing familiarity among the players with people and places and themes, memorable recurring NPCs, and so on - are all enhanced in that kind of setting.
What I like most about the one-city, urban game is that actions have relatively immediate consequences, and those consequences are contemplatable by the PCs. Of course, actions have consequences in any game (or, any good game with a good GM), but in a city they are right there because of the density of population and the difficulty of doing anything undetected or unheard. Moreover, since in a city people know each other, information and events spread fast: to take a simple example, if the PCs kill somebody, it won't be long before other people know about it. They might not know who did it, but they'll know it's happened because in a city, bodies get discovered and almost nobody isn't missed when they're gone.
Because consequences are ever-present in an urban game, this means that the PCs constantly have to contemplate them - and this adds a deep and rich layer of strategy and tactics to their approach. To continue our example, if the PCs in an urban game want to kill somebody, they have to consider what that will mean. What are the chances of discovery? Who will be pissed off? Who will come looking for them? Will the police find out (if there are any)? What evidence might they leave? They have to plan their actions carefully, constantly aware of the ripple effects of causation.
All of this should be present in any game, but the urban setting lends itself to it like no other. This is why, ultimately, I think I will always be most at home with the one-city game, and why I will always be most comfortable with the systems which suit that.
>> To continue our example, if the PCs in an urban game want to kill somebody, they have to consider what that will mean. What are the chances of discovery? Who will be pissed off? Who will come looking for them? Will the police find out (if there are any)? What evidence might they leave? They have to plan their actions carefully, constantly aware of the ripple effects of causation.
ReplyDeleteThey can kill and leave the city. What artificial constraints do you impose to keep players in your one city ?
None. But because almost all of their contacts are in the city they have little incentive to want to leave it and every incentive to want to stay. Unless they fuck up badly.
DeleteThis post interests me for a number of things you don't say. Among them...
ReplyDeleteWhen did this start for you or when did you realize this was your thing?
I assume (and I rarely do that so please tell me if I'm wrong) that the PC adventuers leave the city periodically to go on various adventures of other types (non-urban adventures). Do they return to this city because they actually live there, see it as a home base, have family there, are in good with the local movers and shakers or what?
While my question may seem similar to Kent's, and I suppose it is a little, I am curious as to why the PCs stay in the city and/or come back to the city. Have your Players ever said, "Screw this place we're never coming back here", and torched the town like typical D&D gamers might?
Do your Players, or you for that matter, ever get bored of the city? If not, why not? What keeps it fresh?
Relatively recently.
DeleteMy answer has to be pretty much the same as that given to Kent. Why would the PCs leave the place where all their contacts are, and where all their work is, unless they fuck up badly and have to escape?
This isn't to say that they don't occasionally leave to do other things. Just that their base of operations is in that once place, and they'll come back because it makes sense to. Why do you live in one city and leave relatively infrequently?
What keeps it fresh is new people to meet and new things to do, just like in any game. Cities are big. Although elements remain familiar, much is always new.
I guess what I was getting at (in part) is answered by answering by your question, "Why do you live in one city and leave relatively infrequently?"
DeleteBecause I LIVE there.
It's where I work. It's where I pay rent for an apartment. It's where I have friends I hang out with because I like them and not for any business reason.
Since the most common archetype of the Medieval Fantasy Adventurer in RPGs is the 'marauding wanderer' or 'murder hobo' if you will, I was wondering if the PCs actually live in the city.
Do they own a house? Rent apartments? How do they pay rent? Are they known by the townsfolk to have regular jobs (they are the Blacksmith, the Miller, the Captain of the City Guard, etc.) or are they known to be 'professional adventurers'.
I guess I am wondering, how much does the city (and its inhabitants) matter to them (the Players and their PCs)?
Don't assume I'm talking about medieval fantasy adventurers. My absolute favourite games to run are things like Cyberpunk 2020, Unknown Armies, that kind of thing.
DeleteAny city-"state" will have an authority that stretches some distance beyond it's walls. A city that belongs to some external power will be subject to an authority that stretches even further. Same thing with powerful individuals and organizations in the city. In most settings, big cities will be far between. Moving from one place to another takes time, is costly, dangerous. There will be differences in culture, language. There will be other people like the adventurers, who might take exception to others of their profession moving in uninvited (the same will apply to practitioners of any craft or trade in a medieval city). Bottom line: Moving on to another city has consequences, same as any other action in a sandbox, which the PCs may or may not be willing to face. I don't see the need for any 'artificial restraints' to the PC's freedom of actions in a one-city setting, simply because if the players dont't want to leave, it's their problem if they screw things up, and if they do want to leave, they simply will.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Their incentives are generally to remain, unless those incentives change.
DeleteI strongly agree with this sentiment, for pretty much all the reasons you outline.
ReplyDeleteMy one issue has always been, how do I work in traditional monsters? It's hard to do a simple "clear out the goblin warrens" adventure when those goblins are tax-paying citizens and a critical (if lowest-class) part of the local economy. A city is unlikely to have a significant undead infestation. And the bigger monsters (bulettes, purple worms, gryphons, or even dragons) just take up too damned much room to be encountered within the city limits.
As much as I love urban campaigns, they strongly rub against the grain of the D&D assumptions.
True enough, although I tend not to use traditional monsters in D&D anyway. That said, I agree that urban campaigns and D&D are not always a great fit.
DeleteOh, and about the undead infestation - it's true a city is unlikely to have that (or if it does, it will be apocalyptic and stop being a city). But it can make up for that with sinister cultists.
DeleteI really think it is important to point out that there is a strong faddish and sheepish wave of opinion in favour of the paper thin ubiquitously uninteresting sandbox and against some straw notion of a poorly defined 'railroading' of players.
ReplyDeleteI think noisms has a strong interest in cyberpunk and coupled with his fascination with nippon if I was a player in a D&D game run by him I would encourage the DM to indulge *his* interests and so I would be unsurprised to be advised to consider the city as my universe. When I think of Leiber's Lankhmar I think of two lads heading out on adventures with umbilical chords attaching them to the city because there is found the best in wine and food and women and information about the wider world. That city is the centre of the world but anything like it is extremely difficult to pull off in D&D so kudos to anyone who tries.
Cities are *very* hard to run. I consider some classic failures to be the CSIO, the AD&D Lankhmar supplement and Midkemia Press Cities though I feel that the Warhammer Enemy Within supplements came closest to communicating the feel of fantasy towns and cities with events presented almost like stories.
>> A city is unlikely to have a significant undead infestation. And the bigger monsters (bulettes, purple worms, gryphons, or even dragons) just take up too damned much room to be encountered within the city limits.
I think Phil Barker placed his underworlds beneath his cities.
I like the idea of the umbilical chord. That's how I think of it too.
DeleteTo me the quintessence of this is Sigil, in Planescape. It's a huge, weird metropolis at the centre of an infinite universe (metaphorically, because there is no centre, of course). Its citizens could go literally anywhere. But they always end up going back to Sigil, because of that umbilical link. It has so much going on, it is where everybody else is, where all the pooled knowledge of the multiverse can be found. And because of that it's just a good place to be.
I very rarely get to play but for me as a player this umbilical chord leads straight to the DMs BRAIN. I want to explore his ideas and I want him to have some sort of upper hand.
DeleteThe PCs in my current OD&D game are around third level. They have bought two houses already within the starting town, and one of the cleric PCs now has a seat on the town council. They have contemplated spending personal gold on building a town wall. Zorfath (the town) is probably too small scale to be considered a city (really, it is barely a town), but they are invested now and have reputation there. There is certainly reason for them to come back. The two clerics in the party want to build a church.
ReplyDeleteIt helps that PCs only get XP for spending gold, not just getting it.
Well, two of my favorite fantasy games were run in cities and we lived in the city both times. And in once case had a job in the city government.
ReplyDeleteNow on the name calling. Dear Barking Alien, I object to the term "murder hobo", as it implies that one is homeless and as I stated that simply was not true. However, I am fine with the more correct "wandering marauder". :)
I have an interesting time with this because I too enjoy urban adventuring, yet my current group of players consistently push the limits of choice and consequence to their boundaries, creating a situation where during the last session, one of them said:
ReplyDelete"Alright guys, we've finally made it to a new city. Let's try really hard to make sure that we can come back to this one."
I'm going to try and come back and read this post thoroughly later, because I've discovered exactly the opposite - I much prefer running wilderness adventures. I think city adventures are great, but I find them frustrating and I've never run one successfully.
ReplyDelete